Going Postal: I've gone legit

Last year, my dad (author of the award-winning two-volume set: The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity and The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity) asked me to collaborate with him on a proposed article about the growing trend of letter-writing-as-songs in musical theater, and how that device collapses both space and time within a song. I of course said yes because that sounded super fun and cool and if you think I'm being sarcastic, you don't know me very well.

After many many drafts, revisions, killings of our darlings (sorry Daddy Long Legs, we were very proud of what we wrote about you), I am proud to announce that our article, "Going Postal: Collapsing time and space through sung letters in Broadway musicals," is now published in Studies in Musical Theatre.

The article covers the early markers of this trend, She Loves Me and 1776, traveling through Passion and culminating in the more recent examples in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, Hamilton, and Dear Evan Hansen (with quick drop-ins on Sondheim's frequent indulging of this temporality in Pacific Overtures, Assassins, and others).

Check it out here!

What Did I Do With My December?

Well ... I finally set up my website! Yes indeedy, I finally managed to cross off that niggling entry on my To Do list that had been camped out there for ... longer than I'd care to admit. Part of the reason for the delay was that I assumed I'd have to get a fancy-pants web designer to set it all up for me, which would cost a fistful of dollars. I'd even made contact with a web designer with that in mind - he told me he was swamped but that he'd get back to me in two weeks.

He then proceeded to disappear off the face of the earth.

You know. As people do.

Quoth the Puppets

So, dear bloggy blog, you've probably noticed I've been posting much less. One of the reasons is I'm now also ghost blogging (in the guise of WebSpider for Puppet Treehouse). Don't worry, you're still important to me! I'm just learning to balance the various directions of my writing.

Other distractions include having the book finally assembled and getting reader comments. Soon, gentle readers, soon!

But for now, here's a poem I wrote for Puppet Treehouse that I'm just obscenely inordinately proud of, which means you get to read it too. With full apologies to Mr. Poe, and in honor of the holiday (ALSO! If you want to hear our recorded podcast of the poem, follow the link at the top of the post to Puppet Treehouse):

Role-Playing: Salesman and Product

I have had numerous agents and casting directors instruct me that if I want to be a successful actor, I have to really market myself as a product. This means: clearly decide what - not who, but what - I am, and make sure I really do fit that; that way, everyone else can see Product Zelda and say "ooh, I want that" and know immediately the entirety of what they're getting, and if they use their Visa Check Card, everyone's happy [editor's note: Visa did not pay for this mention, and has no relationship with this blog. However, if they're looking for their next adorable spokeswoman, look no further! ahem].

Even ignoring my inherent RagingObjections issues with this declaration, which I'll get to in a moment, I think it's in all honesty only half of what a successful actor (or a successful anyone) needs to be. He also needs to be a damn good salesman.